Show: THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW Date: October 4, 2017 Guest: Adam Schiff, Andrea Bernstein
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST, ALL IN: That is "ALL IN" for this evening.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW starts right now with Ari Melber, in for Rachel.
Good evening, Ari.
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Good evening and thank you, Chris.
And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour.
Rachel is off tonight. She will be back tomorrow.
There is a lot going on in the world today, not least significant developments in the Russia investigation. The heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee revealed today that even after 100 witness interviews, they can`t rule out collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
And then there was a very unusual appearance by the secretary of state whose only purpose it seemed was to deny ever threatening to leave his post. And perhaps more important was what Rex Tillerson did not deny today.
We have more on both of those stories shortly.
We`re also getting reports today that three American soldiers were killed and two more wounded in an ambush in the western African nation of Niger. The Americans, all green berets were on a routine patrol with local troops when this attack occurred.
And we are also learning, this is just in the past hour, some more details about Sunday`s deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas. The Clark County sheriff revised number of wounded to 489. He says more than 300 have already released from the hospital.
The gunman`s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, also arrived in L.A. late last night, all the way from the Philippines. She was whisked away quickly for questioning by FBI agents. They describe her as a, quote, person of interest in this case.
We can also tell you in a statement released from her attorney today, that she says she`s devastated by this attack. She knew nothing, she claims, of her partner`s plans.
The president and first lady visited with first responders and victims in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, also today, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeting out these photos, brand-new here, this is them with the trauma team at University Medical Center which treated over 100 victims in that terrible shooting.
Now, despite the intense public scrutiny of this case, law enforcement say they`re really no closer to determining a motive here. What they do know is that Paddock planned that attack extensively. Officers recovering 47 shotguns, rifles and pistols from the shooter`s hotel room and homes. Now, at least a dozen have been modified with bump stocks which would have allowed the semiautomatic weapons to fire almost as fast as fully automatic ones.
Now, the sale of new fully automatic weapons have been banned in the United States since 1986. Bump stocks, though, are legal. Though in the wake of Sunday`s attack, there are signs that may be changing.
This morning, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein introducing a bill in the Senate that would ban the sales and ownership of these bump stocks, a move that`s earned support even from her Republican colleagues. I mention that because we`re going to have more on that important development later this hour.
But we begin tonight with these latest developments in Congress and in the Russia investigation. It was just one month ago that the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, made some pretty big headlines when he announced that his committee might conclude its investigation into Russian meddling in the election with two separate reports, meaning partisan reports effectively, one from Republicans and one from the committee`s Democrats.
Schiff told "USA Today" at the time, if it does, then American also have to read both reports and decide which one to believe and that`s far less than ideal. Now, you may remember that at the time, Schiff`s claim raised eyebrow, but it wasn`t really a massive surprise for anyone who`s been following this.
You know, from the beginning, the House Intelligence Committee investigation was totally beset by obvious partisan in-fighting, starting with the Republican chairman of that committee, a name you may surely remember, Devin Nunes. He was, of course, a Trump adviser during the transition. He later had to step down, he said, from his role overseeing the investigation because of the close ties to the White House, his behavior, and discord on the House side which increased pressure on its counterpart in the upper chamber, the Senate Intelligence Committee to provide what many hoped would be a definitive and bipartisan account of just what transpired in the last election.
Now, special counsel Robert Mueller, of course, has the criminal mandate. He`s focused on any potential federal crimes and he can look at intel issues, as well. But if you want a broad, bipartisan accounting of what went down in the election -- well, that`s the purview of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Following Schiff`s comments last month, members of the Intelligence Committee on the Senate side, they announced a surprise of their own. They said they were weighing the possibility of issuing an interim report on their progress in this inquiry.
Now, the top Democrat, Senator Mark Warner, said he worried that an interim update could slow down their work. He also noted the import of what big issue, urgent election security information and he said, quote, I think it`s very important we put out something about the importance of protecting our electoral systems before 2018. That is a shot across the bow. That is concern about the next election.
And then the committee announced Friday there would not be this formal interim report but instead, there would be something else that`s kind of rare, a bipartisan briefing on the status of this open investigation into what happened with Russia, on camera with questions.
Now, that was the unusual scene that unfolded today. These two leaders came out and they delivered a verbal interim report on their work and they have those sign, you see there announcing they did 100 plus interviews and held these 11 open hearings and have pored over 100,000 documents.
So, if anyone is impatient with the pacing here, the Republican chair wants you to know everything is on track.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RICHARD BURR (R-NC), CHAIR, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Let me assure you, we`re going to get the best view of what happened that anybody that can possibly get. At the end of this process, we will be sure that we present to the American people our findings as best we have been able to accumulate them. The issue of collusion is still open, that we continue to investigate both intelligence and witnesses, and that we`re not in a position where we will come to any kind of temporary finding on that until we`ve completed the process.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: The issue of collusion is still open. That was the biggest headline.
And the committee said it would continue to look at anything amounting even a hint of collusion.
The two men also confirmed the committee reached what they view as a logical end to their investigation regarding the firing of FBI Director Jim Comey who, of course, was overseeing the original FBI Russia inquiry.
Then they delved into election security-related matters, namely how secure our democracy was last year and how secure it may be in the future while they acknowledged it`s hard to conclude these efforts when Trump`s own Department of Homeland Security only recently finished notifying the 21 states targeted by Russian hacking attempts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA), CO-CHAIR, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: One of the things that is particularly troubling to both of us is the fact that it`s become evident that 21 states` electoral systems were not all penetrated but there was at least -- there was at least trying to open the door in these 21 states. It has been very disappointing to me and I believe the chairman as well that it took 11 months for the Department of Homeland Security to reveal those 21 states.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Senator Warner is diplomatic. He says Russia was trying to open the door and it took 11 months for the Trump administration to tell anyone on the other side of the door, manning the door in these state, hey, we got a problem here. And Senator Warner basically is also saying at an investigative level all of this takes a long time, fair point.
And then he says, you know what, it takes a lot longer when Trump associates have secret meetings that they keep secret and then they get exposed in real time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WARNER: I know that this feels like it`s taking a long time. It is taking a long time. But getting it right and getting all the facts is what we owe the American people and as we`ve seen, you know, for example, you know, stories emerged in the late summer around, you know, Mr. Trump Jr.`s meeting or the possibilities of a Trump Tower Moscow, you know, chairman and I would love to find ways to close things down but still see strains and threads that we need to continue to pursue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: For example, maybe you had secret meetings about building a Trump Tower in Moscow and you denied it the whole campaign, just senatorial example there.
He talks about strains and threads, as well. Well, they do keep coming. Last week, it was revealed six of the president`s top aides were using private e-mail accounts for White House matters. Among them, president son-in-law Jared Kushner who, of course, had previously failed to disclose his meetings with Russian officials during the transition. And CNN reported that chair and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee were so unhappy that they learned about the existence of Kushner`s personal e-mail account via news reports. They wrote Kushner a letter instructing him to double-check, he`s turned over every relevant document to the committee. Those would be some of the documents you saw on the presentation on their big list.
And then this week, we learned that the clandestine effort to pursue that Trump Tower Moscow deal during the campaign which, of course, only came to light during the summer was not the only Russian real estate deal proposed. On Monday, with the world, of course, focused on the tragedy in Las Vegas, "The Washington Post" had a big Russia scoop reporting that recent documents which went to the special counsel as well as the committees revealed two more previously unreported contacts with Russia during the 2016 campaign. In the first instance, a Russian billionaire reaches out to the president`s lawyer, Michael Cohen, this was late 2015 about a potential Trump branded real estate deal in Moscow. And the second time, a Russian real estate deal was proposed was while Trump was running for president.
The other previously unreported contact also with Cohen and Trump business associate Felix Sater discussing Cohen possibly going to St. Petersburg for what was described as an economic summit with top Russian officials and guess who was going to be there, Vladimir Putin.
Now, today`s briefing, the senators name-checked Michael Cohen and they said, hey, we`re going to hear his public testimony before our committee on October 25th. In fact, we can tell you, he`s one of 25 witnesses that Burr and Warner said they intend to interview by the end of just this month, Cohen`s testimony is, of course, significant because in addition to his involvement in that proposed Russian Trump Tower real estate deal, his name appears several times in the dossier compiled by ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.
And in that, Steele describing meetings allegedly between Cohen and Russian officials overseas, Cohen has vociferously denied they ever occurred.
Well, the facts continue to come out, obviously on a nearly daily basis related to the Russia inquiry. But the big takeaway from today`s press conference was Chairman Burr`s announcement that when it comes to the dossier, the committee`s investigation has hit something of a dead end.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BURR: As it relates to the Steele dossier, unfortunately, the committee has hit a wall. We have on several occasions made attempts to contact Mr. Steele to meet with Mr. Steele. Those offers have gone unaccepted. The committee cannot really decide the credibility of the dossier without understanding things like who paid for it. Who are your sources and sub- sources? And though we have been incredibly enlightened at our ability to rebuild backwards the Steele dossier up to a certain date, getting past that point has been somewhat impossible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Joining me now is Congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking member of, as I mentioned, the House side of this, the intelligence committee there.
Congressman Schiff, thank you for your time tonight.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), RANKING MEMBER, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: You bet.
MELBER: On the dossier your committee also wants to talk to Steele. How do you get someone with his background abroad to talk at all?
SCHIFF: Well, we made outreach to Mr. Steele and we`ve offered Mr. Conway and myself to go out to London to sit down with him if that`s a more comfortable way for him to participate and provide whatever information he can to the committee. I hope he will take us up on that.
But that would certainly be one way that we could accomplish this, but we`re open to any possibility and whatever form he`s willing to cooperate with us.
MELBER: And, Senator Burr, in this briefing today, he referred to this entire Russian advertising effort as, quote, indiscriminate. Do you look at it that way as something that was just all over the place or can we say based on the public information and the leaks that it had more of a focal point?
SCHIFF: Well, I don`t think you can say even with respect to the advertising that it was -- that the Russians were equal opportunity dividers, certainly a lot of the ads on Facebook were very divisive, but a lot of the ads that they chose, the issues they chose to exploit were ones I think that the exploitation of that was to Donald Trump`s benefit.
And, you know, to give you one illustration, for example, if they did ads of Muslims for Hillary and they were targeted at people that had shown a concern about the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, that would be designed to push people away from Hillary Clinton.
Now, on the surface they might look neutral but in their targeting, they might have a pointed effect. I`d also say we haven`t paid much attention to the ads on Twitter that is publicly, but the ads on Twitter, the RT ads on Twitter were almost uniformly anti-Clinton. So they were pushing stories about Hillary Clinton`s health or pushing stories about how close the Clintons were to indictment or pushing stories about dissatisfaction with Hillary by the Bernie supporters. So among the Twitter ads, they were quite uniformly anti-Clinton.
MELBER: Those are the ads that RT purchased.
SCHIFF: Those are ads that RT purchased, that is that RT chose certain stories it wanted to push out to the American electorate during the election that were profiled on RT and you look at them and have to conclude, no, there was a clear design in these ads. With Facebook, I think we have to go beneath the surface to look at how they were targeted to get at the Russian intentions.
But, again, the advertising also is just one subset of what the Russians did. We have to look at the content they were pushing out, the stories they were pushing out, the Twitter trends they were trying to create, and I think that we have a lot to work to do both to uncover the breadth and depth of that, as well as just who they were going after and how they were trying to manipulate our voters.
MELBER: And you are basically saying that while you and Burr both see ads or content that mentions Clinton and Trump, he`s reading that as perhaps helping both of them and you`re saying, the bulk of the Russian backed ads referencing Trump were helpful to him and the ones referencing Clinton were false flags trying to still help Trump?
SCHIFF: I think if you look at a representative sample of the ads on Twitter, the RT ads, the 430,000 or so expenditure that RT made, those you have to conclude just on the surface of -- were designed to hurt Hillary Clinton`s campaign. On Facebook, I think the probably the majority of ads were issues that sought to exploit the divisions within the United States and you have to look beyond the superficial appearance of the ad to the targeting of the ad to figure out who they were trying to move in what direction. And so --
MELBER: And that targeting, Congressman, based on what we`re learning, do you think that was the kind of expertise detail and nuance that the Russians needed American help to do.
SCHIFF: Well, that`s the million dollar question here, was the sophistication such that it couldn`t really have been done without the data analytics of the campaign and on that, we simply don`t have a conclusion yet.
But I will say this, I do agree with my colleagues in the Senate that the evidence we have seen on the intelligence committee`s assessment which includes the Russian motivation of hurting Hillary and helping Trump, the evidence we have seen to date is supportive of the intelligence community`s assessment. I haven`t seen really anything to contradict it and that we`re not done, but we come a long way I think in that area of our investigation.
MELBER: A busy day for all intel issues on the Hill -- so, Congressman Adam Schiff ranking member, house intelligence, I really appreciate you spending time with us.
SCHIFF: My pleasure. Thank you.
MELBER: Now, we have a lot more to come tonight, including the seemingly strange position one member of the Trump cabinet is in tonight and the latest on something very important, the policy response to the Las Vegas mass murders. This proposal is not a slam dunk but it does have at least a flicker of a chance. That story is coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: The year was 1929, February 14th, the city of Chicago was in shock over the St. Valentine`s Day massacre. Al Capone ordered the machine gun execution of seven members of a rival gang. They were murdered in a Chicago garage. It was a sensational crime.
And the nation was captivated and horrified that so many people, seven, could be killed at once so quickly in an urban setting.
"The Chicago Tribune" ran an editorial summoning the shock of a society reeling from the scale of that killing. Quote: These murders went out of the comprehension of a civilized city. The butchering of seven men by open daylight raises this question for Chicago, is it helpless? Helpless to stop the butchering of seven people.
Now, a shooting of seven today, while horrific, it`s not even usually the lead story on our evening news. Now, the St. Valentine`s Day massacre is remembered really more as a kind of a gangland prohibition history than it is as a political science lesson in, say, gun control. But maybe it was that too. Because it did shock the conscience of the nation and Congress ultimately responded to gun-related murder by regulating guns.
Gang violence in fact led to policy changes. Prohibition, of course, was deemed a failure was halted in 1933. The very next year, President Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act, the first major gun control legislation in America and that gun control used registration laws and taxes to regulate machine guns and sawed off shotguns.
One prominent endorser of that law was a man named Karl T. Frederick who said that he didn`t believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses, he said. Karl T. Frederick was the president of the NRA. The NRA backed that gun control law in 1934.
In fact, for the next 30 years or so, the NRA did support and sometimes even wrote different types of gun control legislation. The NRA worked with Ronald Reagan in 1967 when he was California governor to ban open carrying in his state.
And the politics of that effort were not about carrying guns in the abstract, they were about Black Panthers carrying guns. The Black Panthers staged an open carry protest at the state capitol and the particular perception of unrest at the time probably impacted how law enforcement efforts led to those new laws.
But that California ban on open carry, it`s on the books today. And the following year, 1968, after the assassinations of MLK and RFK, President Lyndon Johnson signed a new federal gun control act restricting the sale of mail order guns like the one Lee Harvey Oswald obtained to kill JFK.
But what Johnson had really wanted, gun license and registration requirements was blocked by the NRA.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LYNDON B. JOHNSON, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Voices that block these safeguards were not the voices of an aroused nation. They were the voices of a powerful lobby, a gun lobby that has prevailed for the moment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: A gun lobby. LBJ couldn`t have known then, the gun lobby would go on to get even those compromised rules from that `68 bill reversed. By the time, Ronald Reagan became president, he was again working with them but this time for diluting gun restrictions. Now, even that bill did ad a new rule barring machine guns, those weapons, fully automatic rifles, enable you to hold down the trigger to unleash a hailstorm of bullets.
And that feature actually had a legal significance. It`s nearly impossible to legally justify gun use in self-defense if you are firing indiscriminately. Meaning, those weapons are literally not weapons for self-defense. They`re weapons of war.
And that law makes it illegal to this day to buy a machine gun that`s made after 1986 and to turn another gun into a fully automatic weapon.
Now, everyone knows gun control is an uphill battle. In the `90s, some laws were passed after particularly heinous shootings. The Brady Bill in 1993, the assault weapons ban in 1994. Both opposed by the NRA. And that ban expired and remains defunct.
And while you can`t buy a fully automatic weapon, it is legal to modify a semiautomatic weapon to fire as if it were an automatic weapon. Now, many gun enthusiasts maintain there is a big difference between a fully automatic gun and one that shoots as if it were fully automatic. That may be how law-abiding Americans use these guns as a hobby and gun manufacturers may agree. Those are two views on it.
This week showed another view. The view of thousands of the innocent Americans and music fans stuck in that crowd that Stephen Paddock fired into. He had 12 bump fire stocks in his hotel room that night. A bump stock makes the stock of the gun slide back and forth so that the recoil of the gun makes that firing pace effectively indistinguishable from an automatic weapon. Experts believe that is how he shot so many rounds so quickly, spraying that crowd with bullets over and over.
Policy is always about trade-offs. We know that. There is a trade-off for gun hobbyists who like their legal semiautomatics and really like legally modifying them into even quicker firing machines. And absurd as it may sound to say, a trade-off for every person killed or injured by that legal modification in Las Vegas, and especially for those who might not have been hit had the law simply made it harder and slower to pull off that kind of attack.
After the St. Valentine`s Day massacre in 1929 many in Chicago did not view those victims as particularly innocent or sympathetic, but the technology used to slaughter them, the seven of them so quickly did have the city asking when anyone could walk the streets with a fully automatic weapon, whether that was a good idea.
We`re asking the question as the "Chicago Tribune" put it, is it helpless? Are we helpless?
The nation ultimately answered that question then, no, and it took action. There is a legitimate debate about how to regulate guns and we live under the rule of law and our courts have ruled the Constitution does protect some gun rights.
But historically, there`s never been a legitimate debate about when to regulate guns. Today`s laws will always be the echo of yesterday`s politics. Our politics have forged rules and limits and safety requirements on guns after incidents when their murderous impact swelled beyond what people thought was any reasonable trade-off.
Today, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a new bill to ban those bump stocks which make semiautomatic weapons operate just like deadly automatic ones. She`s also the author of that expired assault weapons ban from 1994. And we can tell you tonight, 25 Democrats have already joined the effort and though some Republicans do seem open to this idea, other top Republicans say, now is not the time for this debate.
But the question is never really about timing, because the question is pretty old anyway. It`s what they asked in 1929. Are we helpless?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: Perhaps you sometimes ask, why is this secretary of state different from all the others? Well, we know he`s a bona fide oil mogul. Our top diplomat had never been one of those before. We know he publicly accepted a shiny piece of jewelry from Vladimir Putin, Russia`s Order of Friendship, that was new.
But there is another thing that make Rex Tillerson pretty different. Diplomats, of course, known for diplomatic language, but this man does not use words much at all.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS: Mr. Secretary, can you do your job with the kind of budget cuts the president has proposed? What does it say about the priority of diplomacy in this administration?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.
MITCHELL: Do you think you`ll have a deputy anytime soon?
UNIDENTIFEID FEMALE: Thank you.
MITCHELL: When do you think you might have a deputy?
STAFFER: Come on, come on, let`s go. Andrea, come on, guys. Andrea, this way. This way. Out please. Out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: If you listen really closely, you can hear Andrea Mitchell laughing a little bit at the end of the tape because it`s ridiculous. This really was a thing early in the administration.
Here`s Rex Tillerson silently shaking hands with the Indian foreign secretary or the top diplomat from Australia or the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs. Every single time, reporters shouting out questions and getting swept out of the room while the secretary of state basically pretends his ears don`t work.
We do see photo sprays but this was super weird and for those wanted to hear from the State Department is frustrating.
Today, though, we learned that Rex Tillerson isn`t holding back anymore, and when he opens his mouth, it is a doozy. That story is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Secretary Tom Price is also here, hopefully. He`s going to get the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as Obamacare. By the way, you going to get the votes?
TOM PRICE, FORMER HHS SECRETARY: I hope so.
TRUMP: He better get them. He better get them. Otherwise, I`ll say, Tom, you`re fired.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Tom did not get the votes. And it wasn`t until investigative reporters at "Politico" uncovered that Health and Human Service Secretary Price had cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars on private jet that is the president finally got rid of him. Now, public displays of animosity like this between a president and his high level officials are unusual in any White House but in Trump`s White House, this is becoming the norm.
Already in his first year in office, we`ve seen the president fire his chief of staff after months of threats, openly mused about firing his U.N. ambassador, reportedly demand his attorney general resign after he recused from the Trump-Russia investigation.
But we`re also seeing high ranking cabinet officials take issue with the president and not only over policy but also over the way he leads. As the president`s remarks before the U.N. last month were winding up, his chief of staff John Kelly spotted head in hands, he looked uncomfortable and downtrodden while the president defended the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, economic adviser Gary Cohn reportedly threatening to resign also over Charlottesville. Pentagon Chief James Mattis this week directly contradicting the president on Iran, Mattis telling the Senate Armed Forces Committee he believes the U.S. should stick with the deal, of course, undercutting Trump.
And now, NBC has an exclusive new report about another cabinet official who`s taken offense with this president. Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson disagreeing on many policy issues most recently about how to approach North Korea. And over the weekend, the president tweeted wildly that Rex Tillerson was just wasting his time trying to negotiate with, quote, little rocket man.
Now, NBC reports those disagreements over policy go deeper and they`re more personal. Quote, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was on the verge of resigning this past summer amid mounting policy disputes and clashes with the White House, according to senior officials. And in late July, while home in Texas, Tillerson threatening not to even come back to Washington and reportedly only coaxed back thanks to John Kelly who was then at DHS and Defense Secretary Mattis and Vice President Pence.
NBC News pointing to a meeting that took place in the White House Situation Room in July where the president, quote, suggested he might fire the top U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan and comparing the decision-making process on troop levels to the renovation of, yes, a high-end New York restaurant.
The next day, Rex Tillerson reportedly called the president, quote, a moron.
It is rare for the secretary of state to ever speak with reporters but today, Tillerson took for him an unusual step of responding personally to this report in unscheduled remarks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REX TILLERSON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Good morning. There were some news reports this morning that I want to address. There`s never been a consideration in my mind to leave. And I am here for as long as the president feels I can be useful to achieving his objectives.
REPORTER: Could you address the main headline of this story that you called the president a moron? And if not, where do you think these reports --
TILLERSON: I`m not going to deal with petty stuff like that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Joining me now is Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian.
Always good to have you.
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, NBC NEWS PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Thank you.
MELBER: He didn`t deny it and how --
BESCHLOSS: No, he didn`t deny it.
MELBER: How unusual is this in history, sir?
BESCHLOSS: Well, you usually don`t hear this kind of language. You know, our first secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson. He worked for George Washington. There is no record that Thomas Jefferson ever called George Washington a moron. Or that Washington said that Jefferson was wasting his time.
You know, sometimes historians like me will find out decades later that in private, you know, there might have been friction between a president and a secretary of state, but in real-time for a president like Donald Trump to haze these people as you were describing, Ari, like Nikki Haley and some of these others it`s disrespectful and totally out of keeping with American tradition.
MELBER: American tradition and it also goes to how others as you mentioned will serve in the cabinet. You know, you`re a historian. I don`t know if you ever listened to the Canadian rapper and artist Drake.
BESCHLOSS: A little bit. I know what you mean.
MELBER: He has a line where he says, you know, his ex would tear him apart but she never wanted to split a thing with him.
BESCHLOSS: Right.
MELBER: How much of this is an issue in governance where Donald Trump will tear these people apart but they don`t feel that he`s sharing with them in the work?
BESCHLOSS: Well, I think that`s the problem because, you know, traditionally presidents do share the work. They have people who are colleagues. Abraham Lincoln was famous for that. You know, he appointed all of these essentially equals, defeated presidential candidates, to his cabinet and they worked very closely together. That`s what you see.
But Donald Trump, the sense you get his whole M.O., going all the way back to New York real estate, is keeping the people who work with him off balance, disrespecting them, causing them not to feel that they`ll have their job tomorrow. It`s not always the best way to motivate people.
MELBER: And then you have the visuals and the kind of -- it`s inestimable (ph), it`s hard to come up with the words with what happened in Puerto Rico.
BESCHLOSS: So right.
MELBER: So, I`m going to ask you to do it instead of me, and then, also very seriously, the president in Las Vegas, this type of leadership, I think, it`s fair to say, he struggles where other presidents in both parties have seemed to know their role, give us your view of that.
BESCHLOSS: Well, you know, a big part of being president is consoling people who are suffering. That goes back to Lyndon Johnson after the hurricane, he consoled Americans after the death of John Kennedy. It`s been a big part of the presidency ever since.
You see Donald Trump going to Puerto Rico, these people suffering in Puerto Rico, their families, he`s throwing paper towel rolls at them as if this is some funny games show, and that scene around the table when he`s asking everyone to say how great his administration did in bringing relief to Puerto Rico. It was disrespectful and it was something that we really should not see a president be doing.
MELBER: Right, you use that word consoling. And I suppose the first fundamental part of that is empathizing with people --
BESCHLOSS: Right, right.
MELBER: -- as individuals and that was absent in a way.
BESCHLOSS: And there`s a reason for that because we want to know that the president is going to emotionally react to things the same way that we do. When people are suffering after a hurricane, it`ll move him to make an even extra effort to make sure that they`re taken care of and that`s what we`re not seeing here.
MELBER: NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss, always learn something when talking to you. Thank you.
BESCHLOSS: Thank you, Ari.
MELBER: Ahead, we have a big news story from inside Trump world. This is from a team of reporters from three different news outlets working on this story for weeks, one of them is here tonight. That`s ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: So, last spring when President Ted Cruz was still a plausible idea, back when he was winning in places like Wisconsin and North Dakota, another of Donald Trump`s old business deals was back in the headlines, a project called Trump Soho, which is not in Soho, but is a 46-story tower that Trump Organization was struggling to fill.
In April 2016, "New York Times" reported that there was a settlement of lawsuit over Trump Soho from buyers who alleged had been tricked into purchasing those units with exaggerated claims about the sales. "The Times" also reported that Trump Soho been the focus of federal investigation on fraud and that was before buyers who sued then settled out of court withdrawing their allegations.
Now, that story, you might not have heard about it, because he didn`t do much politically during those busy primaries. Well, Donald Trump as well into his first year as president, dogged by the Russian investigation, it turns out the story of what happened next in that case actually has a lot to tell us about how he responds to criminal investigations. The headline today, how Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. avoided a criminal indictment.
First, the Trump organization sent in their top criminal lawyers but when that didn`t end this investigation into the Trump kids, they sent in Trump`s own longtime lawyer who also happened to be a major donor to the prosecutor handling the case. He met with that prosecutor, D.A. Cyrus Vance, in 2012, and few months later, in August 2012, the case was closed. According to the report, quote, ultimately, Vance overruled his own prosecutors who wanted to charge the Trump kids.
Now, that prosecutor, D.A. Vance, says the visit from the personal lawyer for Trump had no impact and he followed his practice of giving back campaign money from Trump`s lawyer before they met and no outside attorneys influenced the investigation and rather that the probe didn`t produce sufficient evidence to support prosecution. We can also tell you, a Trump organization attorney says those accusations always lacked merit, noting that after the related lawsuit settled, the accusers recanted any prior accusations about crimes.
But even without a conviction this news story reports that Trumps, the kids, discussing in writing in e-mail how to coordinate false information they gave to buyers and then writing they were worried a journalist might be on to them.
Maybe they were right -- because joining us now is Andrea Bernstein, a senior editor for politics and policy for WNYC, who worked with "ProPublica" and "The New Yorker" magazine on this story.
You were unto them. Why does this matter now?
ANDREA BERNSTEIN, WNYC SENIOR EDITOR FOR POLICY AND POLITICS: Well, it matters now because it`s an insight into the Trump family and how they deal with criminal prosecutions, but more particularly in this case, I think it really gives us a window into the business operation of the Trump family and what the prosecutors found. I mean, one of the reasons that we gave these e-mails a lot of credibility in which they discuss, oh, we can`t say this number because we said a bigger number previously in terms of the number of units sold at Trump Soho.
MELBER: A number that wasn`t true.
BERNSTEIN: A number that was -- right. Very -- not just an exaggeration, but four times the actual number of units sold.
MELBER: A knowing false statement also known as a lie.
BERNSTEIN: Exactly. That`s what the prosecutors believed we came to find, that this was intentional, that they were aware of it and that they knew they shouldn`t get caught. There was one e-mail that was described to us in which Don Jr. was to have said, don`t worry. No one will find out because the only people who know about it are people on the e-mail or people Trump organization.
But prosecutors did find out about it and went very seriously into this investigation and were seriously considering impaneling a special grand jury at the moment in which point Trump`s personal lawyer intervened. So, it tells us about the president, but about his children and the business model of the Trump Organization.
MELBER: Right. And that lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, provided a statement to THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW, basically saying that the donations were completely unrelated and that he views them as ethical.
BERNSTEIN: Right.
MELBER: When you look at the kids, the Trump kids, putting incriminating information in e-mail, something their father avoided. I mean, I covered trials and depositions where he says he doesn`t use e-mail because it helps you get caught.
What is your takeaway about what that says about the kids and any implications for this Russia investigation?
BERNSTEIN: Well, I have written a lot of stories that are based on e-mails and some prosecutors call emails evidence mail for the reason that it is a communication that you believe to be private but can be easily found. We have already seen with Don Jr., the meeting in 2016 with the Russians that was found to be an e-mail which he ended up tweeting out that these kinds of things are memorialized and I think it would be surprising to people -- I mean, one of the things surprising to us as we were reporting this is people who read the e-mails said they were shocked by the lies, in particular that Ivanka told.
And this is something that, you know, they felt that the public view of Ivanka Trump was not borne out in what they read in these e-mails.
MELBER: Right. The line prosecutors wanted to go, sometimes we see that and they`re overruled without any nefarious issue. Your reporting raises these larger questions both about that, and also about how the Trumps deal with this. Thank you very much, Andrea Bernstein, for joining me.
BERNSTEIN: Thank you.
MELBER: Appreciate it.
We have something else to tell you about. A quick piece of news about Russia. Earlier tonight, I was able to interview Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley on "THE BEAT". He is a Democrat who has been looking at these issues. And he says that it`s very likely that Russian hackers received American help when targeting voters on Facebook.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D), OREGON: We turn to collusion. Well, the plot just gets thicker. We now know, thanks to information released today, that very carefully crafted targeting was done in Michigan and in Wisconsin.
MELBER: Are you saying that the circumstantial evidence suggests they would have needed American expertise to do that?
MERKLEY: Yes. That is certainly the likely result.
MELBER: You are saying it looks like some Americans helped the Russians and the bigger question is just whether they were affiliated with Donald Trump or not?
MERKLEY: I`m saying it`s very likely.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Very likely. An idea there that Americans helped according to this senator and the only questions if they were linked to Trump.
I have more on "THE BEAT" tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. Eastern and more importantly more ahead tonight. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: Here is Guajataca Dam in Puerto Rico. When it was built in 1927, Calvin Coolidge was president and although flagged as a high hazard potential by the Army Corps of Engineers, wasn`t inspected since 2013 and since Hurricane Maria cracked one of the dam`s walls, officials have been watching and waiting for any total failure, a breach, because 70,000 people live downstream.
Today, there was another reason to be concerned. The National Weather Service sounding the alarm after days of heavy rain, warning the risk of the dam failing continues to increase potentially causing life-threatening flash flooding downstream. Now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is doing whatever it takes to prevent a breach, removing debris, piling up concrete barriers, dropping them in the hopes of keeping it from eroding any more than it already has.
Now, the dams right here on this map, you`re going to see in northwest of Puerto Rico, in northeast today, this happened. A sewer line break overflowing into the Rio Grande de Loiza, raising fears the only water available to residents there could be contaminated, which is to say nothing of the interior of the island, which is hard to reach. FEMA saying they`re currently developing a strategy to reach the center of the island where recovery efforts have lagged because, quote, many of the roads remain inaccessible, which means whole towns are left out when it comes to getting the food and water and fuel we have been reporting on.
And the local mayors of those towns are on their own, trying to figure out how to haul supplies from regional drop-off points to their towns. Now, shortly after Trump wrapped up the visit to Puerto Rico, the official death toll has doubled now from 16 to 34. No matter how great he claims the recovery effort`s going, the numbers are stark.
Ninety-one percent of the island in darkness. No power. Eighty-eight percent of cell phone sites down. Most hospitals technically open but only offering critical services because they don`t have supplies or space or are dealing with power outages.
And while the administration was flip flopping today on what sounded like a promise to wipe out Puerto Rican debt, the FCC is approving a lump sum of $70 million to at least get Puerto Rico`s telecom back up. The money goes towards helping the U.S. Virgin Islands where 70 percent of cell towers are still down.
And word of another looming crisis. "Bloomberg" reporting tonight Puerto Rico burning through the cash on hand before the hurricane hit and so it faces a government shutdown by the end of the October, by Halloween, unless Congress gives up some more emergency money.
And Puerto Rico`s treasury secretary telling us, without the assistance of Congress, Puerto Rico`s government won`t be able to operate next month and hurricane recovery comes to screeching halt. In other words, as always, but especially, watch this space.
That does it for us tonight. Rachel will be back tomorrow. Hope to see you tomorrow on my show, "THE BEAT", which is every night at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.
And now it`s time for "THE LAST WORD WITH LAWRENCE O`DONNELL."
Good evening, Lawrence.
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